


New Tricks

by Anonymous



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: And Some Healthier Ones, F/F, First Time, Immortality, Post-Canon, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-19 10:14:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29873112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “I need some time,” Andy says, so they give it to her.Now Nile has to decide how to spend it.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Nile Freeman
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	New Tricks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FaintlyMacabre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaintlyMacabre/gifts).



“I need some time,” Andy says, so they give it to her.

They’ve just finished their first job for Copley, a three-week sprint from Lagos to Taipei and back to London that somehow ended without any deaths, either temporary or permanent. Not without injuries, though. Andy’s just had her shoulder stitched up by some doctor Copley keeps on retainer. She looks tired.

Two months, and they’ll all meet in Istanbul. Nile has a slip of paper with the address tucked into her wallet, not to mention several credit cards with limits higher than her mom’s mortgage. She also has passports for three different countries in five different names. That took Copley all of an afternoon to arrange, as far as Nile can tell. Andy stays just long enough to make sure she’s set, then offers Nile and Copley a handshake each. Joe and Nicky get full-body hugs. Then she’s gone.

Nile tries not to feel like a baby bird being pushed out of the nest.

“What do you need?” Nicky asks her, very seriously.

Nile laughs. “I think expenses are covered.”

He shakes his head. “I mean company, or time for yourself. It’s very confusing, in the beginning.”

Confusing is one word for it. “Thanks. I’m sure you and Joe have better things to do than babysit me.”

“Whatever you need,” he says, “that’s more important than anything else we could be doing right now. You’re family. And it doesn’t have to be both of us, if that’s too much.”

That surprises Nile, who’s sort of started to think of them as joined at the hip. She supposes two months isn’t so long, though, in the grand scheme of centuries. She considers the offer. She’s still drowning in questions, keeps coming up with more for every one she gets answered. She’s trying not to think about her mom, how easy it would be to book a ticket back home and ignore all the advice she’s gotten. Maybe it’d be better to stick with someone who can talk her out of doing something she won’t be able to take back later. Maybe she needs to figure that out on her own. “Thank you,” she says, after a moment. “I think—I could use some time, too.”

Joe looks up at that, finally. He’s been watching the door ever since Andy left, a worried frown creasing his forehead. “Whatever you like. You know how to reach us? Then be careful.”

He doesn’t say of what. She can fill in the blanks herself.

Nile can’t remember the last time she had total freedom to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. Her time’s always belonged to someone else. The Marines, family, school. She looks out at a sea of possibility and sees it stretching out past the next two months—two years, two decades, two centuries, all the time in the world, and the gibbering terror she tried to drown out with Frank Ocean and a pair of earbuds threatens to rise up and choke her.

It’s fine. She just has to keep moving.

She’s always wanted to go to France, and last time she didn’t exactly have the chance for sight-seeing. It’s a short plane ride to Paris, where she dredges up everything she remembers from her art history minor and wanders in a daze from museum to museum, until she can hardly see straight and she keeps thinking about the Rodin stashed away in that cave, wondering how many of these artists the others have met. The foundations of Notre Dame were laid in the 12th century, when Andy was already thousands of years old.

Nile thinks of following Andy back in time, getting on another plane and hopping from ruin to ruin. The Parthenon at Athens was built in the 5th century BCE. The pyramids at Giza date from the 26th, Sechin Bajo in Peru from the 35th—she’s well down a Wikipedia rabbit hole before she lands on a tell in southeastern Turkey that might be twelve thousand years old, and thinking about it too long makes her want to throw up.

So she goes out drinking instead. The pounding immediacy of the music, the heat and sweat clinging to her skin and the bite of alcohol at the back of her throat, are the perfect antidote. So is the guy she fucks outside the club where it’s too dark to see his face. She’s never been one for anonymous sex but she’s spent two decades being responsible and she’s earned the right.

She wakes just after dawn the next morning in her ridiculously expensive hotel room and realizes she’ll never have a hangover again.

This immortality thing has its upsides.

Nile orders room service and drinks her coffee in bed, the early sunlight turning the cool, soft sheets a pale yellow as she thumbs through lists of Parisian tourist sites and nightclubs on her phone. Then she looks up flights to Cairo, except she’s not actually sure she wants to be thinking about ancient history just now, either. She has a seat reserved on the next plane home almost before she realizes what she’s doing. She stops herself just before confirming her payment, hands shaking so hard she has to stab at the screen three times to cancel. Then she curls up in the sheets and waits for tears that never come.

She passes through another week or so in a dream, airports and train stations and hotels, barely noticing what country she’s in. She considers calling Joe and Nicky to tell them she’s made a horrible mistake, she can’t do this on her own, please come and get her and tell her she’s going to be all right. Then she nearly calls Copley to ask if he has any jobs lined up that she could manage on her own. Finally she grits her teeth, finds a gym, and drives herself past the limits of her old endurance, ignoring torn tendons and strained muscles that knit themselves back into perfect health a few heartbeats later.

Everything aches as she steps into the shower afterwards. Then, suddenly, it doesn’t. “Know what your problem is, Freeman?” she demands of her reflection, when she’s toweled her face dry. “You don’t know how to take a break.”

A memory floats to the surface: Andy, Joe, and Nicky sitting around the table the night after they sent Booker away, finishing the last of many bottles of wine. Nile had been asking them about the most beautiful places they’d seen in their long, long lives. Andy had mentioned a small island off the coast of Brazil, which they’d last visited in the 1930’s; the lines of her face had softened while she talked about the empty beaches, the sun, the forest heady with birdsong and the smell of honey. The quiet.

“It’s probably high-rise hotels and casinos now,” Joe had said, before laughing and asking Andy if she remembered that job in Ibiza.

The transatlantic flight is longer than she’d like. Too much time to think. Fortunately, Nile’s always been good at sleeping on planes. And when, after the train and the taxi and the ferry ride, she finally reaches that little island, there aren’t high-rise hotels or casinos. There aren’t even cars. She walks up and down the sandy paths, drinking in the sun and letting the melodic Portuguese wash over her in a jet lagged daze.

She has a hotel room reserved, and part of her would like nothing more than to fall into it, but sleep deprivation is as good right now as the drinking and dancing, nearly as good as working out until she’s ready to fall over, so she doesn’t head there straight away. Instead she settles her backpack a little more securely over one shoulder and keeps moving along the beach as dusk begins to fall. It’s not the height of tourist season, but there are plenty of swimmers and surfers taking advantage of the last few hours of light. Nile’s a decent swimmer. Her dad made them all learn when they were kids. She’s never tried surfing, though.

Nile’s steps slow, and she realizes she’s been watching one of the surfers for the last few minutes. A long-limbed woman, white but with a deep tan, whose casual grace on the waves is eye-catching even from a distance. She might stand there for ages except her stomach growls, and she realizes how long it’s been since she ate. She gets out her phone, finally ready for the hotel. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices the surfer finally making her way back to shore. Nile’s just figured out which of the paths she needs when a voice breaks into her thoughts, shockingly familiar.

“Are you following me?”

It’s Andy. Nile nearly drops her phone. There’s no wariness under Andy’s surprise, just amusement. “No,” Nile says. “Are you following me?”

“I’ve been here since Saturday.”

Nile’s too tired to remember what day of the week it is. “I wasn’t trying to follow you. I mean, you mentioned coming here once. After dinner, the other night. I didn’t know you’d be here. It just sounded—good.”

Andy’s eyebrows have climbed her forehead. She looks better than good. She looks wonderful. Easy in her own skin, shouldering the weight of her board like it’s nothing, like she doesn’t carry the weight of the world and many centuries, too. “That wasn’t an accusation.”

“Sorry,” Nile says. “Jet lag. I just got in.”

“Right,” Andy says. Her eyes travel over Nile, taking in her backpack and the wrinkled state of her clothing. “Have you eaten?”

She’s used to having her meals and her sleeping arrangements sorted for her. It’s the easiest thing in the world to let herself be guided back into the island’s interior and sat down at a table. The food is delicious, but she hardly notices what she’s eating. It’s even easier, when Andy says, “My room has two beds,” to forget about her own arrangements and fall asleep to the hum of the air conditioner and the soft glow of Andy’s bedside lamp.

She’s used to waking up to the sound of someone else brushing her teeth, too, but not to the realization that she has nowhere to be. She stretches out to fill every corner of the narrow bed, then sits up when Andy walks in from the bathroom, her hair wrapped in a towel. The same can’t be said for the rest of her.

“Shower’s yours,” she says, before bending to pick up a bottle from the foot of the bed.

Nile tries not to look away too obviously. She doesn’t think of herself as a prude, and she’s had to change in close quarters often enough not to mind, but she’s used to doing what she can to preserve the mutual illusion of privacy. Searching for something to say, she notices there are two more identical bottles where the first one came from. “That’s a lot of sunscreen.”

Andy shakes her head, wry. “When I got here, I got my first sunburn in six thousand years.”

When Nile laughs, Andy’s face opens in a broad smile. Her eyes crease at the corners. Nile can see the wrinkles there, can imagine how much deeper they’ll be in a few years.

They spend the whole day at the beach. Nile keeps expecting that restlessness to set in, the jitters that run half a step ahead of the fear and the grief, but instead she’s just still. She puts her earbuds in anyway, listens to an endless playlist on shuffle until her batteries die and it’s just the sound of the waves in her ears, and every so often the cries of the gulls. She drops a hand over her eyes to shade them and looks sideways through her fingers at Andy, long and lean and brushed with fine wisps of clinging sand. She’s reading a book in a language Nile doesn’t recognize. When she turns a page, her fingertips linger feather-light on the edge. Nile remembers that hand closing about the handle of her labrys. The sun beats down through her skin, warming her through. When it’s too much she leaves her phone in a heap of cord and runs over the sand into the water, throwing herself underneath until her lungs burn and the dangerous heat has leeched out of her.

“What are you reading?” Nile asks over dinner. They’ve barely said a word all through the meal, but it’s not awkward. They’re sitting on a low terrace, the sky darkening above them and the ice in their glasses melting into a muddle of lime and sugar and the local liquor that tastes a bit like rum.

Andy comes partway out of whatever reverie she’s settled into. “Classical Vietnamese poetry.”

Nile lifts her eyebrows. “How many languages do you speak?”

Andy has to stop and think about that. “That depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether we’re counting separate dialects, or archaic forms of the same language. And on whether we’re counting languages I was fluent in but haven’t used in a few thousand years. I don’t think I actually remember any Old Avestan.”

“Give it a ballpark.”

Andy sips the remains of her drink, frowning. “Fifty-odd? That’s just a guess.” Nile’s reaction must be obvious, because Andy shakes her head. “It’s not that impressive.”

“I know some linguists who’d disagree with that.”

“It’s just time,” Andy says. “And inclination. There isn’t any skill humans have invented that you can’t master if you give it long enough. And you’ll have long enough. Well,” she amends, smiling a little, “almost any skill.”

“What are the exceptions?”

“Quynh never could carry a tune,” she says, and for the first time there’s no edge of pain in it, just an old grief softened with fondness and age. “But for the most part: any language, any instrument, any craft. Joe spent half a century refining a recipe for filo dough.” Nile snorts. “I mean that.”

“No,” Nile says, “I believe you.” She sits with the idea for a while. Maybe painting, she decides. She always wanted to get better with oils. She has the money to spend on it now, too. “What did you get best at?”

“Killing people.” Andy says it without much expression.

Nile nods. “Seems to have worked out for you.”

“I do all right.” The flash of dry humor is gone as quickly as it came, and Andy’s eyes drop down to her glass, her fingers tracing the rim. “And saving them, too. I’m not sure I would have said that a month ago.”

“I can keep reminding you,” Nile replies. “Often as you need.”

She doesn’t smile, but there’s a warmth in her face that Nile’s glad to see. “I might have to take you up on that.”

“And in return, maybe you can teach me a few of the moves you picked up over the millennia.” She means combat moves. Obviously. The double entendre never even crossed her mind. Except then Andy really looks at her, and there’s a subtle consideration in that look, not weighing her as an opponent or an ally but—something else.

Nile doesn’t think of herself as a coward, but she needs a minute. She’s not sure she’s quite ready for this. So she’s looking somewhere else when Andy says, “Might have to take you up on that, too.”

While it’s still cool the next morning, they go out and find a deserted stretch of beach for some sparring. “You’ve got a lot of instincts to unlearn,” Andy tells her. “You’re used to prioritizing defense. It’s second nature when you’re mortal. Sometimes you’ll still need that. Bullet through the head will slow you down, and limbs take some time to regrow. Depending on your objective, you can’t always wait for that. But sometimes you need to turn it off, push through whatever’s happening to your body, and just get done whatever needs to get done. The key is to know what you need and when, and be able to shift between them so that _choice_ becomes your instinct.”

“Are you finding that difficult?” Nile asks. “Staying in defensive mode, I mean.”

Andy shrugs. “I didn’t think I was, but I might have avoided that shoulder graze if I was better at it. I have worse habits to unlearn than you do.”

“We can work on that, too.”

That gets her a quick grin. “Only if you start landing some of your punches.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Nile says, because that’s been worrying her. She’s getting used to ignoring her own pain. Diving headfirst through a plate glass window helped. But she’s seen training injuries before, some of them serious, and Andy’s somehow been categorized in her head as both _Most Terrifying Person I Know_ (which is saying something, given how Nile’s spent her career) and _Protect At All Costs_.

Andy just shakes her head. “You can try.”

So she does. They go at it empty-handed, toes digging into the sand for purchase. Andy’s so _fast_ —Nile’s no slouch at hand-to-hand, she knows how to dance in and out of her opponent’s range, but Andy never lets a blow get near her. Once or twice Nile gets her in a hold instead, but she’s like an eel, slick with sweat and sunscreen, and it never lasts long enough for any follow-through.

“Are you holding back?” Nile asks when they’ve stopped for a drink. She hasn’t broken any bones yet. She remembers what Andy did to her in the airplane.

“Are you?”

“You kidding?”

“Stop being afraid of yourself.” It’s hard not to stare at the long curve of Andy’s throat, stretched back as she lifts her water bottle. She swallows, wiping at her lips with the back of her wrist. “I’m not going to let you kill me.”

“I—”

“Nile,” Andy says, in a tone that’s hard to hear as anything but an order. “Trust me.”

The thing is, she does. Maybe more than she should, given they’ve known each other a matter of weeks. But Nile needs someone to trust, someone who has her back without question. She always has. So she nods, lets Andy haul her to her feet, and lets go.

Nile can feel the difference right away. She doesn’t start just blowing past Andy’s defenses, but she does start pushing her, taking the edge off that speed. Andy pushes back and suddenly it’s blow after blow to her gut, her temple, feet hooked behind her knees and driving her down into the surf. She’s sure she’s cracked at least a few ribs. She knocks Andy down a time or two, though. Worth it.

The midday sun’s brutal above them. Nile ducks her face into the water, scrubbing at the blood from a cut above her eye. There’s no sting of salt in an open wound.

When she straightens, Andy’s watching her. She doesn’t try to conceal it. “Not bad,” she says. “Did we get you out of your head for a bit?”

“Am I that obvious?” She’d been hoping to hide the impending breakdown. If she could keep it from Andy, maybe she could keep it from herself, too. That was probably wishful thinking.

“You don’t give much away,” Andy says, “but anyone would be struggling right now. You didn’t have much time between finding out you were immortal and taking down Merrick.”

“Is that why you asked for a break?”

“No.” Andy reaches down to splash water in her own face, wincing a little. She has a long scrape down one cheek from their last tumble. “That really was for me.”

“And now you’re stuck with me anyway.”

“If I didn’t want you here,” Andy says, amused, “I’d just tell you. You can’t spend centuries with someone if you’re too worried about sparing their feelings.”

“I’d think it would work the other way.”

She shakes her head. “Honesty’s better. So is asking for space when you need it. You’ll learn the difference between being alone and being lonely.”

Nile wants to ask which Andy’s been, this last five hundred years or so. She wants to ask if it’s been hard watching Joe and Nicky, who’ve never not had each other. Instead she asks after Andy’s bruises. Then she makes them go back to the hotel for cold packs and disinfectant. “ _You’ll_ learn what you can ignore and what you have to take care of sooner rather than later,” she says, stretching a butterfly bandage over Andy’s cheek. “But sooner’s usually better.”

“I was expecting to hate the healing. It’s the other things that surprised me.”

“What other things?”

“Aging,” Andy says, closing her eyes. She’s leaning a little into Nile’s touch. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

“That’s just as well. You won’t have noticed yet. I’d let myself forget what all the little aches and pains are like. It used to be nothing, sleeping on a dirt floor. Of course, the first time I died, they hadn’t invented airplane seats.”

“Or memory foam mattresses,” Nile points out. “It works both ways.”

That gets her an actual laugh. Nile feels it in her gut, right where Andy’s heel landed an hour ago. _All right, then_ , she thinks, and sets her reaction aside for the moment.

She falls asleep in the hotel’s tiny courtyard as the afternoon wears on, then jerks awake with the echo of her mother’s voice in he ears. She can’t remember the dream, but it leaves her aching. Nobody’s around to see, so she presses her fingers against her lips and lets the tears slide down her face.

They eat at the same restaurant as the night before. There’s live music and a glorious seafood stew that leaves Nile sated and boneless in her seat. Andy’s moving a bit carefully. She won’t suggest sparring tomorrow.

Nile orders another round of drinks. She’s discovered it’s hard for her to get really drunk, but it’s easy enough to manage an nice background buzz if she times it right. “Do you think Booker was right?”

Andy’s face doesn’t change, but Nile can feel unease moving under the surface. “About what?”

“About my family,” she says. “About what would happen if I told them.” Then, when Andy hesitates, “Honesty, you said.”

“I don’t know,” Andy replies. “He’s one person. That’s one family. My situation was different. Life and death were different back then in ways I’m not sure I can explain well. I don’t even remember them well.”

“Do you remember your family?”

“Glimpses,” she says. There’s a guitarist playing gently near the bar. If Nile listens closely enough, she can hear the brush of his fingers against the dampened strings as he changes position. “Faces, the sound of their voices in a language I haven’t known for millennia. I can’t ever be sure if it’s real or it’s just what I tell myself I can remember.” Then she looks up, straight at Nile. Her green eyes are dark in the evening light. “You’ll have pictures, though. Video.”

“Yeah.” She’s got a baby niece, just three months old. Nile hasn’t met her yet, but her brother had been texting photos at least twice a week. She thinks about never getting any more, about her brother’s face frozen forever at twenty-eight, his hair never going grey, the laugh lines never forming beside his eyes.

“I don’t know if he was right. You’re not Book. Your family isn’t his. You might decide to tell them. I wouldn’t try to stop you. Just take your time first, make sure you can live with the decision. You won’t have any choice about that.”

“You really wouldn’t stop me? I thought you guys had rules.”

“I think we’re all going to have to work out some new ones. Maybe we should have done that a long time ago.”

They take their time walking back to the hotel. Nile finds her eyes straying to the waistband of Andy’s thin cotton skirt, which keeps dipping low enough to show the jut of her hip as she walks. Nile remembers her walking naked out of the bathroom and envies that lack of self-consciousness. Is it the product of a time or place when nobody cared about nudity, or living for centuries with people whose bodies are as familiar as her own? Or is it one of the things that just doesn’t matter after you’ve been around long enough?

Nile waits until the door has closed behind them to say, “I don’t want you to worry about my feelings. If I’ve got this wrong and you’re not interested, that’s fine.” She doesn’t think she’s wrong, though.

Andy’s bent over to remove her sandals. Her face is in shadow, her body outlined in light. “Interested in what?” But she knows.

“I’m not lonely,” Nile says, because maybe if she says it firmly enough it’ll turn out to be true. “But I don’t feel like being alone tonight, either.”

The funny thing is, she’s never really let herself think about women this way. She’s had plenty of opportunity, with the number of incredibly fit people in the Corps, and it’s not like the idea bothers her, but it always seemed like one complication too many. She’s not sure what’s different now, other than _everything_ , and what Andy said about needing to change the rules. And Andy herself. Andy, who fights like she was born to it and whose smiles Nile’s willing to work for. Andy, who’s not quite smiling now, but looks like she wants to—like Nile’s surprised her yet again.

She should probably be more nervous than she is. She should probably admit she hasn’t done this before, not quite like this. But she figures Andy’s got more than enough experience for both of them, and Nile does trust her. How could she not, when her hands slip under Nile’s shirt like they’ve always been there? She has callouses at her fingertips and across both palms, and deeper ones behind the first joint of her right hand—archery? Nile wants to ask about that later, but it will have to be later, because just this minute the important thing is the way they feel against the soft skin of her stomach. Andy just stands there for a long minute, hands rising and falling with the movement of Nile’s breath. “I wasn’t sure you were going to ask,” she says.

“I wasn’t sure, either.” She doesn’t think she can walk away from this. One night stands, she can do, but not with the woman around whom she’s already decided to shape the beginning of her long, long life.

“I’m glad you did,” Andy says. “I only have so many nights left.” And before Nile can object to that, she leans in, sliding her palms around the base of Nile’s ribcage, tilting their mouths together.

She should taste of blood and molten metal and the dust of centuries. Instead the flavor of caipirinhas lingers on her tongue, and the heat of her is achingly human. Nile presses in close and curves her hand around the back of Andy’s head, where the hair is growing out at the nape of her neck. It’s fine and soft and damp with the sweat of the day.

Andy’s hands haven’t stopped moving. She eases Nile’s shirt up, breaking the kiss long enough to get it over her head. Then she stops, hissing.

“Are you all right?” Nile asks in alarm.

“Damn bruises,” Andy says. “I just forgot. I’m used to getting them during, not before.” Which is also something Nile should probably admit she hasn’t done, but with the memory of grappling on the sand so fresh in her mind she can see the appeal. Something else to figure out later. Right now she has to help Andy get Nile out of her sports bra, which she wears tight like a second skin; the elastic seams leave faint ridges in her flesh. Andy’s fingers dance along them, soothing and provocative in turns until Nile twists under her hands, pulling Andy tight against her chest to feel the friction of her shirt and the small swell of her breasts underneath. “Gorgeous,” Andy breathes in her ear. “Do you have any idea?”

She doesn’t bother answering. She’s too busy pushing at the waistband of that skirt until its long, flowing length puddles on the floor. Andy’s underwear is practical and no-nonsense, simple cotton the same black as the bra that’s been peeking out the collar of her shirt all evening. She lets Nile shove it down over her hips, but then she crowds Nile in against the wall before she can get a really good look at her, pushing one bare leg in the space between Nile’s own. Nile’s still wearing the loose cargo pants she prefers for traveling, and the feel of Andy right there—her whipcord thigh, the sharpness of her knee—with a layer of fabric between them is almost too much.

Andy’s grinning at her, a dangerous, delighted, knife-edged smile. Nile wants to laugh, or to say something, but her breath is coming too short even before Andy pulls the drawstring of her cargo pants open and slides one of those deadly hands inside.

She has the sense she should be doing something other than clutching at Andy’s shoulders and gasping, but all that occurs to her in the moment is to bury her face in Andy’s neck. Her mouth opens as she pants for breath, and then it’s the easiest thing to taste the salt of her skin, to let her teeth close on Andy’s collarbone, to press in just enough that she might leave a bruise after all. No more than that, because Andy might tell her not to be careful, but Andy is mortal and hers, and Nile doesn’t know how not to care for that.

Her left leg is trapped between Andy’s thighs and her shoulders are flush against the wall. She uses that wall for leverage, grinding against Andy’s hand, pushing that hand back into Andy’s leg. Andy lets out the same short, explosive sound she releases with a knockout punch and digs the fingers of her free left hand into Nile’s back. It’s all too close, too hard, and it’s perfect. The buildup takes Nile by surprise, and before she knows what she’s doing she’s clenching around Andy’s hand and screwing her eyes shut tight.

Nile’s used to being quiet, so she doesn’t do much more than breathe, but she has to do that for quite a while before her legs stop trembling.

They’re both still half dressed. “Can I help you with that?” Nile asks.

It’s a terrible line, but Andy’s already a sure thing, so it’s not like it matters. But Andy just shakes her head. She’s still smiling, more loosely now, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “You just keep doing what you’re doing,” she says, and, god _damn_ , starts fingering herself with that same hand. So Nile drops her forehead against Andy’s shoulder, doing her best to watch in the small space between them. She pulls a bit at Andy’s waist. Andy’s taller, but Nile’s strong—she can take her weight, and feeling Andy lean in, letting Nile take the load off, is almost as good as the look on her face when she comes. Better, in its way.

She does finally get Andy’s shirt off, when they’re sprawled on one of the beds afterward. Not for anything too exciting—just to run her hand up her back, feel the curve of her spine and the strength of her shoulders. The bruises from the afternoon have darkened despite Nile’s best efforts with the ice packs.

“All right?” Andy asks, when they’ve both been quiet for a while.

“Yeah,” Nile replies. She’s surprised to find she means it. “I’m good.” She smiles, hiding it in Andy’s elbow. She can add this to her list of coping mechanisms, along with night clubs and brutal violence. It goes straight to the top of that list, in fact. “Got me out of my head for a bit.” 

Andy laughs, low in her throat. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“Is that why you wanted this?” Nile twists under the sheets so she can see Andy’s face. “To make me feel better? Not that I’m complaining,” she adds.

Andy shakes her head. “I’m glad if it did, but no. I’ve been around for a while, but that doesn’t make me complicated.” Her eyes have gone unfocused, staring up at the white ceiling. “I have thirty, maybe forty years left,” she says, slowly, as though weighing her words. “Supposing I don’t get myself shot before then. Some of that time is yours—getting you ready, helping you work this out. Some has to be for Nicky and Joe. I need to know they’ll be all right when I’m gone. And Copley’s jobs—those matter. I need that. But—” Now her eyes travel down to fix on Nile’s, clear and resolute, like the unshakeable center of the world. “I need some of that time for myself.”

“I’ll have to keep reminding you of that, too.”

“As often as you like.”


End file.
